I See Satan Fall Like Lightning 1570753199, 9781570753190, 2895071578, 0852442904

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Satan l.pdf
satan intr.pdf
satan 1.pdf
satan 2.pdf
satan 3.pdf
satan 4.pdf
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ISBN 1-57075-319-9

I

9 781570 753190

230 G441i

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning Rene Girard Translated, with a Foreword, by James G. Williams

IIUSWElL MEMORIAL LIBRARY WHEATON COLLEGE WHFJl,TON. It 6011'17

ORBISGBOOKS Maryknoll, New York 10545

m fa

NOVALIS

/1" ~I~ GRACEWING

I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven . .. -LUKE 10:18

Ori,ginally published as Je vois Satan wruber comllle i'ic/air by Rene Girard, copyright © 1999 by Editions Grassel & Fasqllelle, 61, rue des Saints-Peres, 75006 Paris, France. English transLHiol1 copyright © 2001 by Orbis Books. Published in the United States by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0308. Published in CanadH hy Novalis, Saint PHui University, 223 Main Street, Ottawa, Ont~1rio lOS 1C4. Published in England by Gracewing, 2 Southern Avenue, Leominster, Herefordsllire HR6 OQE

All Tights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, induding photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing frum the puhlisher. Queries regarding rights and permissions should be addressed to the publishers. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card No.: 00-050182 Canadian Library Catalogue No.: COO-901789-5

ORBIS/ISBN 1-57075-319-9 NOVALlSflSBN 2-89507-157-8 GRACEWING/ISSN 0 85244 290 4

Contents

ix

Foreword by James G. Williams

1

Introduction Part One THE BIBLICAL KNOWLEDGE OF VIOLENCE

7

1. Scandal Must Come 2. The Cycle of Mimetic Violence

19

3. Satan

32 Part Two THE ENIGMA OF MYTH RESOLVED

4. The Horrible Miracle of Apollonius of Tyana

49

5. Mythology 6. Sacrifice

62 71

7. The Founding Murder

82

8. Powers and Principalities Part Three THE VICTORY OF THE CROSS

95

103

9. The Uniqueness of the Bible 10. The Uniqueness of the Gospels

121

11. The Triumph of the Cross

137

12. Scapegoat

154

13. The Modern Concern for Victims

161

14. The Twofold Nietzschean Heritage

170

Conclusion

182

Index

195 vii

Foreword

R

GIRARD is the world's premier thinker about the role of violence in cultural origins, and about the Bible's illumination of these origins and our present human condition. Girard retired in 1996 after a distinguished teaching career, most recently at Stanford University. He is well known in his native France, where one of his books, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the \X/brld, provoked an intense debate among intellectuals and clergy in the late 1970s. The present work was repeatedly on the bestseller list in his native land after its publication in 1999. The attention his writings have drawn has been less dramatic in the English-speaking world than in France and the rest of Europe. However, his work is becoming more and more widely disseminated, influencing literary critics, theologians, psychologists, and many others who are concerned with what it means to be human in light of our biblical heritage. Rene Girard offers a new way of seeing ourselves and our biblical heritage. His method is to begin, not with theology or the revelation of God, but with an understanding of human beings and human relations that the Bible and the early Christian tradition disclose. This understanding of humankind he articulates is an anthropology ("anthropologos," or discourse about what it means to be human). Girard's anthropology focuses first on desire and its consequences. He calls it "mimetic desire or "n1imesls. n It's a desire that comes into being through imitation of others. These others we imitate Girard calls "models," models of desire. He has also used the word "mediators/' because they are "go,betweens," acting as agents between the individual imitating them and the world. There are various words in ordinary language that suggest what Girard is getting at: ENE

11

ix

Foreword )[ exan1ple "heroesll and Hrole models.)) Even fashion Inodels who j

TIodel" clothes are acting in this way for their public in the setting f clothing fashion. They present the clothing (bodies) that suggests ,hat their admirers should desire. The desire that lives through imitation almost always leads to onflict, and this conflict frequently leads to violence. The Bible nveils this process of imitative desire leading to conflict and vio,nee, and its distinctive narratives reveal at the same time that iod takes the part of victims. In the Gospels the ptocess of unveil19 or revelation is radicalized: God himself, the Word become flesh 1 Jesus, becomes the victim. The innocent victim who is crucified ; vindicated thtough his resurrection from the dead. The disciples ,f Jesus finally undergo a complete conversion as they move from oeing lost in the mimetic desire of the crowd to imitating Christ, ,hich Occurs through their experience of Jesus' resurrection. Their onversion and the resurrection of Christ are two aspects of the mne event. To introduce the reader to what Girard offers in this, his most ecent, book, I will present a series of questions and answers about lis basic concepts. Getting a grasp of these concepts is essential or understanding what Girard has to say about desire, sacrifice, capegoating, Satan, and other important topics. I hope this will be lelpful, especially to the reader not already familiar with his thought.

i. What is the chief identifying characteristic of human beings? Answer: To answer this at the anthropological level (leaving ,side any question about the human soul or spirit): mimetic desire. fhe tenth commandment of the Decalogue in the books of Exoius and Deuteronomy addresses mimetic desire directly. The tenth :ommandment does not prohibit simply one desire, "coveting," but ieals with desire as such. Desire is not an instinct; it is not someching programmed into us, so it doesn't work like instincts in other :reatures. It is rather a potential that must become activated for an .nfant to become human, and it becomes actual for the infant as ~e or she observes and imitates the other, the "neighbor." We want

Foreword

Xl

what our neighbor possesses. We desire what our neighbor desiresor what we think he or she desires. Of course, the chief neighbors, or "near ones," for the infant are its parents. This desire that comes into being through following models of desire is not bad; it is good. To desire what models desire is necessary if the child is to be able to learn and love and deal with the world. But it can and does lead to conflict and violence.

2. How does mimetic desire lead to conflict and violence? Answer: If our desire to be like a model is strong enough, if we identify with that person closely enough, we will want to have what the model has or be what the model is. If this is carried far enough and if there are no safeguards braking desire (one of the functions of religion and culture), then we become rivals of our models. Or we compete with one another to become better imitators of the same model, and we imitate our rivals even as we compete with them. This rivalistic situation opens human societies to the possibility of scandal.

3. What does Girard mean by "scandal"? Answer: "Scandal" translates words from both Hebrew and Greek that mean "stumbling block," something that people stumble over. (It can also mean "trap" or "snare," a closely related meaning.) Girard means specifically a situation that comes about when a person or a group of persons feel themselves blocked or obstructed as they desire some specific object of power, prestige, or property that their model possesses or is imagined to possess. They cannot obtain it, either because they cannot displace the model and acquire what he or she has or because the rivalry with others in the group is so intense that everyone prevents everyone else from succeeding. When this kind of situation occurs often enough, there is an accumulation of scandals to the point that those involved must "let off steam" or the social fabric will burst. Then all those involved in this tangle of rivalry turn their frustrated desire against a victim, someone who is blamed, who is identified as an offender causing scandal.

xii

Foreword

The whole process of scandal developing to a breaking point is an unconscious one. Girard calls the identification and lynching of a victim the "single victim mechanism." This mechanism or operation is the community's unconscious way of converging upon someone it blames for its troubles. When this happens, the community actually believes the accusation it makes against the unfortunate person. One way to put this, in the language of the Bible, especially the Gospels, is that this entire single victim process is the work of Satan. Indeed, it is Satan.

4. What or who is Satan, and how is he related to scandal? Answer: Satan or the devil, which are interchangeable titles in the New Testament, is the "accuser," the power of accusation and the power of the process resulting in blaming and eliminating a substitute for the real cause of the community's troubles. That real cause is the contagion of mimetic desire, which triggers the need for release from disorder, and this need in turn triggers the identification of a victim, someone who is weak or in some way marginal enough that the community can eliminate him or her without fear of reprisal. Satan as the "prince" or "first one" of this world is the "principle" or "first thing" of both order and disorder: of disorder because he is a figure representing rivalry and scandal, of order because he represents the mechanism that is triggered at the height of the disorder. "Satan casts out Satan" at this moment in extremis, just before tbe community explodes. Satan bas no real being; he exists always as a parasite on the being of humankind, just as theology tells us that he exists as a parasite on the being of God. Satan is imagined and symbolized as a person, as "sOlueone," because satanic power becOlnes attached to the victim as the victim mechanism does its work. The victim is viewed as a devil or demon. Satan and scandal thus overlap, but scandal describes primarily the process of desiring, then stumbling over models who are rivals and obstacles, and finally assigning blame, which leads to victimization. Satan describes primarily the mechanism of accusing and

Foreword

xiii

lynching a victim. Satan and scandal are key terms for understanding

mythology. 5. How is mythology related to Satan and scandal? Answer: Girard thinks comparing the various religions and their sacred stories is important. In fact, he calls the present study an essay in comparative religion. However, the comparative study of religion has typically missed the mark in two respects: (1) it has failed to notice that myths disguise real violence, and (2) it has usually reduced Christian origins to another myth because of similarities between Jesus' death and resurrection and tbe dying and riSing of the gods in classical and ancient Near Eastern myths. (1) Myths disguise real violence. Comparative scholars tend to miss this, or in some cases they simply may not want to see it. A great deal of the language and symbolism in myth is fantastic by rational and empirical criteria we ordinarily use in any kind of research or scientific work. Girard admits that much of myth is fantastic but holds that anthropologists and historians of religion have unfortunately held to a "one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel" approach. That is, because there are rotten apples, unbelievable things, in the stories and texts studied, then everything about them must be unbelievable. But this is not the case. There are still at least two good apples, and these are very important apples, indeed. One is evidence of real social crisis, violent contagion and disorder. This fact is joined by another: the crisis is ended by violence, specifically the lynching of a victim. The lynching is covered and disguised due to the belief that lies at the very origin of the myths: the victim really is the source of the troubles afflicting the community. Such belief results in transferring blame to the victim and exonerating the community. The myths always take the side of the community, the people, the crowd, against the one who is accused of criminal acts-a process well described in this book in the chapter on "The Horrible Miracle of Apollonius of Tyana."i (2) The similarities between the myths 1. For other analyses of myths, see Girard, The Sca/JegoQt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), chaps. 3, 5, 6; "Generative Scapcgo